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One of the great things I get to do is an Instructional Coach is to manage our District set of Breakout Boxes. We ordered a standard 6-box class set from breakoutedu.com.

Standard 6-box set from Breakout Edu

When a school or class wants to use the boxes, we have them choose from the list of our prepared games, or if time permits, we ‘prepare’ a new game for them, especially if it is a topic that we think will get re-used. Typically we start out with a game from the ever-expanding BreakoutEdu library, but we often find that the games need to be modified to better fit a 6-box than a 1-box format. And we’ve found that some types of clues just don’t work great – so we modify those.

Our mission has been to make Breakout Edu a fun and stress-free learning experience for our teachers too. As such, we reset all of the locks, print, cut out and laminate all of the required clues, and bring the ready-to-use game to the classroom. Then, due to the driving distance in our rural district, we most often facilitate the game so that the teacher and Education Assistants can play along with their students. This often means “re-setting” the game for several classes in one day. To facilitate this, we’d like to share several tips and tricks that make it possible to quickly reset and easily keep track of materials.

When your Breakout Box Class set first arrives…

Use 6 different coloured dots (like the kind the librarian might use on the spine of her books) to categorize EVERYTHING. We chose 6 distinct colours: blue, green, yellow, orange, purple, and grey. Put these dots on EVERYTHING: large box, small box, hasp, each type of lock, ESPECIALLY THE KEY, flashlight, USB, UltraViolet lens, the Hint Cards, the box of the question card deck.

Save the little zipper baggies that items like the hasp and 3 and 4 digit locks come in. When you unpack the extra rings for the multi-lock (eg. shapes, numbers, colours, extra letters, etc), put each of these into a separate little Ziploc bag and put one of those coloured dots on each bag. This might seem silly now, but it sure helps speed things up when it comes time to change the locks or makes it easier if you are only using a few boxes at a time.

Multi-lock pieces -store in separate colour-coded baggies

Store all of the colour-dot-coded extra lock parts (eg. extra keys, the multi-lock pieces not in use, the USBs, the glasses, etc.) in a small, sturdy box (a tackle box works great) that you can keep close at hand if you travel with your set of boxes.

Some Extras to Buy…

We went to Home Depot and bought some different multi-directional locks; in this way, you can use a letter clue, a colour/shape clue AND a directional clue. I’d advise you to buy a few extra right away to save yourself a trip to the store. I won’t tell you how many of these I’ve gone through, but there is essentially no cracking these if you mess up the reprogramming. At approximately $8-10 a piece, they are worth the investment, as they allow for some really cool clues, and with this version of a directional lock, you can use more than five directions.

Buy extra UV flashlights. We found that within a year, all of the original Breakout Flashlights had stopped working, due to a variety of issues. We’ve always ordered more from Amazon as I can’t seem to find them at any local stores. I’d recommend buying more than you think you’ll need.

A set (or two) of dry-erase markers that stays with the Breakout kit. At first, we just borrowed from the classrooms we went to, but keeping about a dozen markers (with the coloured dots) in a baggie with your Breakout supplies makes life easier.

Always have extra batteries on hand for the UV flashlight.

Keep a roll of masking tape with the Breakout Box set. There are often posters that need to be taped to the walls.

When you Get the Game Materials Ready…

If laminating is an option at all, LAMINATE all of the pieces. We’ve used some of our game materials for over two dozen plays. Students write all over the clues with dry erase markers and we just wipe them off and reuse them.

If you are able to laminate, hopefully, you are also able to splurge and print in colour!

Print each set of clues on coloured paper that matches the coloured dots on the boxes/locks. We find that light pastel-coloured paper works best; although it’s not a perfect match with our dot colours, it makes reading the clues easier than strongly hued paper. Why bother with the coloured paper clues? You only have to find a stray white paper clue a time or two, and then have to search through each set of clues to find which one it goes with to realize the colour coded paper makes a lot of sense.

Be sure to use the “invisible UV pen” BEFORE you laminate.

Colour code and laminate the envelopes

We store our coloured paper clues in separate envelopes with, yes, a colour-coded dot. Why separate envelopes? This has worked well when we end up doing single-box games, or 3 boxes each of two different games, for example. Each envelope is also titled with the name of the game.

Use a seventh envelope of the same size and label it “BOSS ENVELOPE”. In this envelope, store the following: your white paper originals; the set-up instructions for the game (including lock codes and how to solve each puzzle); any single game pieces, such as a poster that gets hung in the classroom;

Use a really big envelope to store all of the other envelopes. Label this big one with the name of the game, the appropriate grade level(s), and any important reminders, such as “each group needs an iPad”

If possible, LAMINATE ALL OF THE ENVELOPES. Any good elementary teacher knows that this is a thing, but for those of us from high school, it’s a very important thing to learn….do it for your Breakout envelopes.

Packing Up After the Game…

Always collect and store the “Hint” cards separately. If they get swept into one of the envelopes along with the clues, it can be a long time before you find them again.

If you know you will be using the ‘same game’ the next time the boxes are used, go ahead and reconnect the locks, however…

If you next will be needing to set the locks to a different game, pack up by leaving the locks unlocked and putting them inside the small box, inside the big box of their matching colour.

I’ve started to leave a generic “We Broke Out sign” permanently in every box. To help me distinguish it from all of the others, I printed this one on legal sized paper so it is easy to identify and return to each large box when packing up.

Modifications that We Frequently Make to Breakout Edu published games…

Issue: Many published games hide a clue “behind a poster”, or have an invisible ink clue written on a poster that all teams are to use. This is a big game-breaker: as soon as one group finds the clue, all other groups usually notice it and no longer have to work at solving it

Solutions: Sometimes the fix to this issue is simply to leave a copy of the poster as a clue with each individual group

Issue: Too many “poster on the wall” clues. One wall/poster clue is almost too many! Here’s why: the students who are really into the game are off at the posters trying to solve the clue – this results in a student or two who are left at (or choose to stay) at home-base, often aimlessly trying to hack the locks. With the others off trying to solve the poster puzzles, there really is very little team-work or collaboration happening.

Solutions: As above, make a copy of each poster and leave a copy for each group to solve together.

Issue: Hiding the key. The keys are little and easily lost.

Solution: Create a game-related image that fits onto a quarter-sized sheet of paper. Tape the key to this laminated, and ultimately, colour-coded sheet of paper and then hide it. Students then realize that they are looking for a paper colour that matches the rest of the clues: the key is less likely to get lost, and the students are more likely to “find” the correct key for their box.

Issue: Hiding anything. In a multi-box game, you have to hide everything x 6. This can quickly become a disaster as clues that you thought were out in the open disappear.

Solutions:

Hide clues in groups. For example, if 3 items need to be found, hide one colour-coded item from each group on a book-shelf; hide the second colour coded item from each group under the teacher’s desk, etc.

Take a picture of the location where you hid each item or grouping; trust me on this one.

At the beginning of the game, tell students to “hunt” for any clues with hands behind their back – looking with only their eyes. If they use their hands, they will start moving items around, even though you’ve told them the items are in plain view. Once they start rearranging items in the search process, the items that you hid in plain view are now inadvertently hidden beneath something.

Other random tips…

Print (and laminate if possible, a class set worth of the various “We Broke Out” celebration signs. If you include the We Almost Broke out signs, put them on a slightly different coloured paper such as grey or beige so that they are easy to distinguish.

It is easy to suggest that early finishers discuss the questions on the Breakout cards. Interestingly, this never seems to take long enough, especially if you are trying to have the other groups solve to complete. To remedy this, we have started to have groups record their answers to a few of the Breakout prompts on FlipGrid. This seems to keep them occupied for longer.

In our southern Alberta rural school district we have many very small schools. Sometimes there are only three or four, or even one or two students in a grade level. In primary and elementary levels the solution is triple graded classrooms, however, this is less practical or realistic once students hit junior high. One solution that our district has employed is the development of a robust video conferencing network, supported by reliable technology.

While our division has been connecting classrooms via video conferencing for over a dozen years, the supporting technology has changed and sometimes outpaced the technology that our teachers are using. In the early days of video conferencing teacher assistants would fax and/or email student assignments back-and-forth to the teacher to be marked. Of course, this was time-consuming, and the time it took to digitize these paper products added to the length of time students waited for projects and assignments to be marked and returned. As technology has become more 1 to 1 it is important that our teachers shift from the fax and email mentality to using the many tools that are now available to not only make accessing work easier, but also more engaging.

Our ninth grade video conference math teacher is located in one of our larger centres but teaches math to four different school sites, each with 1 to 5 students.

5 sites are joined via video conference for Math 9

Each group of students is assisted by an Education Assistant (EA) who helps with the content on site, as well as the logistics of getting materials back-and-forth. Despite the support, it is still a challenge to keep students on task and to help them as much as they need. To alleviate this, we have been working together to come up with solutions for this teacher and one of the very best has been in the form of Pear Deck.

The Video Conferencing Pear Deck Revolution

The teacher pushes her Google Slides lesson out to the students and they join the Pear Deck session on an iPad. As they work through the lessons, she can watch in real time as students respond to questions.

The video conference teacher using Pear Deck can see thumbnails as each student answers questions in real time – from 5 different sites.

Unlike some other platforms of this nature, students do not have to press submit to send their work. This is very important in this situation because the teacher can see who is stalling, off task, or struggling. After the modelling portion of the lesson, the teacher turns the lesson setting to “student-paced” so students are able to work through remaining questions/slides at their own pace, while the teacher can move between slides to support individual students.

At the end of the lesson, the teacher publishes “student take-aways” – a premium feature – which automatically puts a Google Doc copy of all notes/slides and a copy of the student responses into a Pear Deck folder in each student’s Google Drive, organized by lesson date and title. The teacher also has a copy of this document for each student so she can use portions of it for individual assessment if desired.

Other video conference classes in our district have also been using Pear Deck, but since they are humanities-based, students can type many of their responses on Chromebooks. Trying to have students type Math just to use Pear Deck would be a deal breaker, so we have found enough iPads (sometimes old ones) to allow each student to use a stylus + iPad to “write” their math. This has taken some getting used to, but it is becoming more normal. We have solved the issue of “not enough writing space” by increasing the custom slide length in Google Slides – this allows the students to scroll down to continue their answer, something they can’t do when the lesson is on a standard-sized slide.

Despite initial excitement, in many ways, this experiment in virtual Professional Development was somewhat disappointing if you consider some of the statistics:

by the end of the study right before our February break, only two of the original 16 participants had completed almost all of the suggested posts

about a quarter of the group did not get past Chapter 1

by the time we broke for Christmas, less than 40% of participants were still responding.

However, our feedback suggests that it is feasible to try again:

We had 13% completion, but whenever I watch a Seth Godin interview, he often mentions that only 5-10 % of people actually complete online courses. So, I guess that we should see our 13% completion as positive!

Over 85% would try a FlipGrid book study again or recommend it to a colleague

90% found the FlipGrid format easy to use and also appreciated not having to drive

70% enjoyed “talking” their responses instead of having to write them

But when we match the reality of the completion data with the post-survey feedback, it is obvious that we do need to make some changes. Here are some of the most commonly repeated suggestions from participants:

We should start with an “in person” get together to help everyone feel more comfortable with each other

YES to some sort of regular email or Remind reminder just before responses are due

We should remind members who do not like to see themselves on video that they can just put a picture of their cat, dog, pile of marking etc. in front of the camera, thus just providing us with audio

FlipGrid is one of edtech’s most versatile tools, as its super user-friendliness applies from kindergarten to university to professional meetings and beyond. I’ve had the opportunity to use FlipGrid in many different educational settings:

in my own high school Social Studies classrooms (I often make FlipGrid one of several ‘options’ for high school students)

as an Instructional Coach, one of my favourite parts of my job is introducing teachers to the fabulous flexibility that is Flipgrid. One way we do this has teachers use FlipGrid to reflect on their learning after we have hosted a Professional Development session. Usually, Flipgrid is new to them and they are a little bit shy about the ‘on camera’ part, but by the time they leave, they are interested in using FlipGrid TOMORROW in their classes. So then I have an opportunity to…

provide support for teachers when they use FlipGrid for the first time in their classes; we have many ELL classrooms, and the teachers were over the moon when they started to use FlipGrid to give a voice to students as young as first grade

at our Distance Learning School, as the mode through which Language Arts students submit their oral assignments. What an improvement over previous methods – students are much more likely to submit oral assignments so I feel that I get to know them a bit better.

in a college Educational Technology course that I taught for pre-service teachers – when FlipGrid was new, I knew that I had to add it to the syllabus for the ‘video’ week in my course; see a sample topic from the course in the Disco Library

helping our video-conference teachers use FlipGrid to connect their students between remote campuses

as a method of bringing teachers together asynchronously to participate in District Wide professional book studies across 300+ km in our rural school division (check out this link to topic in FlipGrid’s Disco Library)

And some tips for making FlipGrid easier to use in your classroom:

Shy students??

Let them start out by just recording their voice – let the video capture a book cover or a blank page

Keep the topic moderation “on” – that way you can see the student videos, but classmates will not be able to see each other’s videos – a “safe” way to start. Introduce students to the new My FlipGrid feature so that they can see all of their videos, including those that are moderated

design FlipGrid tasks such as scavenger hunts where students can record a list of objects, using the rear-facing camera instead of showing their own face

Young students?? Set up a center or station with an iPad and have them all record on the same device; the first few times they will need adult guidance, but after some practice, they will be able to click that green button and go!

Need to simplify video project playback?? Students can upload previously recorded videos to a FlipGrid topic, allowing them to easily be viewed one after the other for a class viewing party

Scavenger Hunt?? Make it quick and easy with a FlipGrid #Fliphunt! Have participants use the rear-facing camera and “pause” the video while they collect all of the “objects”

Absent Students?? If you have a student that has been out of class for an extended period of time, use FlipGrid to record and send encouraging messages from classmates

Time Zone Constraints?? Ever try to Skype with a class on the other side of the world? Maybe not, because the ‘timing’ often just does not work. Subvert the time zone curse by having classes communicate internationally using FlipGrid.

Teaching Alberta Grade 2 or 4 Social Studies?? Use #GridPals to find and connect with other classes in the communities or provinces that you study

#FlipGridFever is what you catch when you love FlipGrid and are happy to share it with others.

With a little bit of training, you can submit applications to earn Certifications like the ones I have below. It usually involves a fair bit of work, but the learning is worth it. Check out the video that I created for my Level 2 FlipGrid Certified Educator badge.

Sweet relief! I will admit that I literally did a dance of joy when this email flashed across my iPad screen in the middle of leading a Virtual Reality session on bugs and insects with a grade 2 science class!

After a lengthy application process, I have been chosen as a Google for Education Certified Educator. The application involved 6 hurdles:

Our Prairie Rose School District is a geographically vast space in southeastern Alberta covering over 29,000 square kilometres. It borders Montana in the south and Saskatchewan in the east. Our central office is located somewhat centrally, yet when teachers assemble for meetings they travel from schools located over 2 hours from the north and almost 2 hours from the south-west. So, as you might imagine, gathering teachers for professional development is a challenge.

Fortunately, it is 2018 and it is time that we started to better leverage all of the amazing access that we have to digital technology. Many of our small, remote schools connect students via video-conferenced classes, but it seems we are generally less likely to connect virtually as educators. To remedy that, my fellow Instructional Coach and I decided that we would try to provide valuable PD that didn’t require travel. By what magic you ask? We are attempting some district-wide book studies using Flipgrid as our platform. Some of our participants are already using Flipgrid in their classes or school, and some will be catching #FlipGridFever for the first time.

We are featuring two books that align with our district goals of Deeper Learning and Literacy. Participants will have approximately 2 weeks to read a chapter/section and respond to their choice of discussion questions. Then, to make it a ‘conversation’, they have an additional week to ‘respond to’ the musings of at least two other educators on that same chapter.

Learning that Lasts

This is Disciplinary Literacy

Have you read the books and want to join the conversation? Our participants include teachers and administrators from primary to high school!

Out of district? Go to flipgrid.com and use this guest code to check out the conversation about Disciplinary Literacy: a8d729a2

Less than a month ago, I wrote a passionate ode to Padlet for my college pre-service teachers who really didn’t seem to “get” Padlet’s adaptable uses for the technology-infused classroom. Over the past year, I have fallen in love with Padlet again and again as they have added so many great new features; it has morphed significantly since I began using it in 2012 when it was still called “Wallwisher”.

So, you can imagine my dismay, when an email from #DitchThatTextbook, a blog that I follow, was advertising a podcast called, “What to do now that Padlet isn’t free”. I went into panic mode, as I use Padlet quite frequently in a number of settings – with my high school students, college classes, PD sessions as an Instructional Coach, as well as many other general uses such as mini-travel blog!

When I finally logged into my Padlet account, I did heave a sigh of relief, as I read Padlet’s “Dear User” letter. They informed me that I had a limit of 53 free Padlets, and my current count was only 50. So, I could sign up for the Premium version at $8.25/month, or just keep my account under 53 Padlets.

I’m sure you can guess which I chose! And honestly, it was pretty easy to delete a dozen ‘stale’ Padlets from courses that I haven’t taught in a few years, or class duplicates.

Check out the podcast by #Ditch That Textbook’s Matt Miller, as he explains some rationale behind Padlet’s move to Premium.

In the end, I applaud the number of features that Padlet has maintained on their free side. Unlike recent pay increases from companies like Thinglink.com, who have made it nearly impossible to use with students without bucking up the cash, Padlet still has a giant “free” learning playground.

Touring our PRSD8 Google Expedition Virtual Reality set around our vast school division has been quite delightful. The first reactions of the students from K-12 to the virtual world brings a smile to my face every time–as does the grinning teacher, watching the first reactions of his or her students. Yet, there is so much more to discover in the virtual reality world than Google Expeditions, especially since it (Expeditions) is so American based in content.

So it was with great excitement that we were able to successfully launch our first YouTube 360 playlist. A school in Oyen wanted to use VR “to do Olympic events” for an Olympic-themed day that they were having. Since nothing of the sort currently exists in Google Expeditions, I knew this was the opportunity that I had been looking for to push myself to try and create a YouTube playlist and use it with a class of students.

It turned out to be a great success, as over 10 groups of 10-13 students filed through our ‘viewing parlor’, took a comfy seat, and launched into our Olympic events playlist: bobsled, ski jump, luge, skeleton, downhill skiing, snowboard cross. A few teachers even made it through the whole experience!

Watch below as the grade 1 students in Mrs. Roberston’s class experience the thrill of the ski jump!

This particular playlist worked very well for the small groups of students that we had a one time. A downfall to using YouTube is that you have to click quite a few spots to get to the playlist AND get the viewer into “Google Cardboard” mode. Cathy and I clicked all of the buttons each time for each student, as one wrong click, and it takes much longer to get back to the correct place.

A key element to using the playlist was to have a distinct acronym in the title (PRSD8VR). This playlist was the only thing that came up when searching YouTube, which then made it easy to select and save to the “Library”. Once we had put the playlist in the Library of every viewer, it made it much more convenient to launch the playlist quickly.

The Olympic theme certainly made the YouTube playlist a great place for a trial run. Thanks Oyen Public for helping push problem solving!

Classes in our school division have had access to Virtual Reality for 3 school weeks now. Cathy and I , our PRSD8 Instructional Coaches, have done lots of learning and discovery as we have transported the VR viewers and run VR in seven of our schools so far, and we will be visiting another two schools new to VR this week. This week I will be posting a few times about our learning curve in this exciting new project.

We had been looking forward to this ground-breaking day since before Christmas. Susan Martin, the teacher/principal of Jenner Colony School had gotten permission from the school’s German teacher, Ron, to let the student’s experience the Virtual Reality viewers. For those not familiar with Hutterite Colony schools, many do not allow any form of technology; that means the teacher cannot even have a computer at the school, and there is no internet or even television. So you can see why we were very excited to bring Virtual Reality to Susan’s colony! The virtual reality experience would be a spring board for a writer’s workshop for grades 1-3 students on using exciting verbs and adverbs, and a grade 4-6 newspaper writing lesson.

We also learned some valuable lessons this day. In our excitement to bring VR to a colony, it failed to register that a Google Expedition VR experience requires a lot of internet — and we were going to a place without internet. So it is plain embarrassing to admit that we did not have this epiphany until we were actually in the school building and unpacking the viewers!

As a result of our incredibly embarrassing oversight, we learned a few valuable things:

It IS possible to run Google Expedition over a hot spot. (Thanks goodness!)

A hot spot can host up to 5 devices at once. With this, we were able to connect the “Leader” tablet and then 4 VR viewers. (Fortunately, this was a very small group of students, so we were able to accommodate all the students, the teacher assistant, the German teacher and 2 additional kindergarten students in 3 sittings)

Having two students share a single device is manageable

It is actually a really different – and nice – experience to just sit among 3 or 4 students and lead an Expedition

Thanks to Mrs. Martin and her lovely class for such a fun day. We can’t wait to come back – and not just because we got to wear slippers all day! Hopefully we will get to hear what is happening to Dorothy and her adventures in OZ!

Classes in our school division have had access to Virtual Reality for 3 school weeks now. Cathy and I, our division Instructional Coaches, have done lots of learning and discovery as we have transported the VR viewers and run VR in seven of our schools so far; we will be visiting another two schools new to VR this week. This week I will be posting a few times about our learning curve in this exciting new project.

At EBHS this past week, we tried Google Street view for the first time with our new set of VR Viewers. Mr. Wadman wanted his high school art students to get to explore New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and there were no Google Expeditions available. It turned out that the only way to MoMA was by trying something new! Google is so great because not only have they mapped streets, but also the inside of museums and tourist attractions–but when the building is empty! If you use an “identified” StreetView upload, (as opposed to a citizen upload), there are no other people standing around–you have the whole museum to yourself!

We started by installing the Google Street View app on all 30 viewers and then making the icon available in Kid’s mode. The high school students were a good starting audience for this experiment as they had to follow instructions very carefully to get to the right Street View gallery. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a way to “favourite” or identify the desired version of StreetView for something like MoMA that has dozens of uploaded options. Fortunately, the art class followed instructions well, and we all got to the same gallery room relatively smoothly.

Mr. Wadman created a scavenger hunt for students once they were in the museum; this gave them a sense of purpose as they explored the many different rooms in the museum.

What we have learned:

We will be recommending StreetView for junior high and higher. Unlike Google Expedition where the silver button is not a factor, students need to use the button to “walk” or advance their way through hallways and doorways. This takes some time to get used to and would be difficult for younger adventurers

A class should start with a Google Expedition BEFORE taking on Google StreetView

So far, if a teacher wants to do a StreetView tour, we are advising that they create a scavenger hunt or similar task to help keep students focused and moving through the space — this may change the more we experiment with StreetView